Parabolic Ballad

[Heikki Raudaskoski]

On Fri, 9 Jul 2004, Jasper Fidget wrote:
> > > Just stumbled on this, wondered if anyone had noted it before:
> > > Along a parabola life like a rocket flies,
> > > Mainly in darkness, now and then on a rainbow
> > > Andrei Voznesensky, "Parabolic Ballad" (1963)
> > > http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/557.html
> > No, it's 1958.
> Ah, yes I copied the translation date.  Is this considered source material
> then?  There is also this translation (from the other direction as it were):
> http://spintongues.vladivostok.com/voznesensky2.htm>

Steve Weisenburger writes in "Companion":

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V454.34-35 , B530.19-20 *What is it that flies? Los!* In a figurative
sense, the German Los is "fate"; in a contrary and literal sense it means
"free." As represented in GR, the V-2 flight profile embodies both. Hite
(Ideas of Order 164, n4) also points out Soviet poet Andrei Voznesensky's
"Ballad of the Parabola" as a possible context. It begins:

Fate flies
like a rocket, on a parabolic curve -
Mostly in darkness, but sometimes -
it's a rainbow.
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Heikki


P.S. FYI Mark - Voznesensky's an Architect too.